Price would've had elbow surgery if he were younger
March has been hectic for Boston Red Sox left-hander David Price after concerns surrounding his pitching elbow arose at the beginning of the month.
Although things now appear to be on the right track, with Price feeling better than he anticipated, the situation may have been different if the 31-year-old was younger.
"They said if I was 22 or 23 they'd have told me to go have surgery," Price told reporters, including Evan Drellich of the Boston Herald. ... "I've gone through this. This is something I feel like happens every spring training. It's those first four to five weeks of spring training that I feel like I go through this every single year, and this year was just a little bit worse. You know, my arm got a little bit more stiff, and that's why we took the precautionary actions that we took. That was the right thing to do."
The Red Sox were concerned about Price's elbow after an MRI on March 2 forced the 17-game winner to visit Dr. James Andrews and Dr. Neal ElAttrache at the NFL combine in Indianapolis.
Manager John Farrell announced Price would avoid surgery after his visit with the doctors, but that he'd be shut down for 7-10 days. Price has since been cleared to begin throwing exercises.
The hard-throwing southpaw tested out his elbow for the first time Saturday, throwing 25 balls into a net in the batting cages, and walked away feeling encouraged, although he's still unsure of a diagnosis for what's going on with his elbow.
"I don’t know what it is," Price said. "I couldn’t diagnose it. I honestly could not give you a 100 percent answer on what they say. They used medical terms. I don’t even know half of the names of the stuff in my arm. I don’t know it. Like I said, when they said no surgery, no injection, just give it some rest, I literally shut my brain off."
In his first season in Boston, Price posted a 17-9 record with a 3.99 ERA across 35 starts, which included 230 innings.